NEIGHBORHOOD STORIES SYSTEM - From the Neighborhood to the World

[JonaO703]

@simsplayer818You make a great point!  I am actually not a fan of the phone calls either.  In my previous household, my sim's mother called daily asking about "try for baby", which I thought was not only disruptive but also a bit disturbing.  It would be much better if we could disable all features of Neighborhood Stories.  I don't understand why some features can be disabled but others can't.  We can turn off aging, autonomy, whims, lifestyles, Seasons effects and storms, Eco Living eco footprint and NPC voting, Get Famous celebrity gain.  I would much rather have the option to turn off all Neighborhood Stories features (and also the option to turn off Sentiments :-).

[valohim666]

@JonaO703 As much as I'd like to think that EA will expand on this and provide more options to mess with, I have zero faith in them at this point and believe that the only way we'll see any additional options is if modders do something with the computer versions of the game. I also don't understand why there aren't more options for certain things. Even some of the existing options seem lazy compared to older games, for example in Sims 3 there were something like 3 options for adjusting autonomy where as here it's either on or off. I also don't care for sentiments. They're temporary, they only really seem to provide moodlets, and they seem worthless. If there were permanent ones and they were more meaningful then sure, but as they are now... meh lol.

Oh and I finally got one of those story calls about engagement... and it did absolutely nothing. First I had one sim call and ask about dating someone else, so I told them to go for it. Then I invited both sims over and used the "Hook Up With" option to try getting them together that way. Not long after that one called about finding a ring in a bag and I assume it was supposed to be from the other sim, but that's where I noticed a problem. Instead of actually saying the other sim's name, it said "I found a ring in___'s bag". After that I didn't see another call from either sim, so I tried playing one of them to see what was going on. They were in each other's relationship panel, but had no relationship whatsoever and certainly weren't in any sort of romantic relationship. So even though that's just one instance of seeing an engagement call, it's not off to a good start seeing as how it didn't do anything at all.

[simsplayer818]

So many of us are in agreement on this but don't appear to be being heard.

I've started keeping track of the problems with Neighbourhood Stories in my game on a Sims daily basis and it's surprising, a lot of it is repetition. My current Sim is from a huge family which live across 8 different households and her brother, sister, aunt, sister in law and brother's older mother in law are constantly ringing about trying for a baby. I have to check they haven't had one because No doesn't always work. Their households are set up just how I want them, I don't want any changes to them as I put a lot of work into them. There's a lot of explorers, archaeologists and celebrities and loads of Sims across all age groups. I lost them all twice due to error codes and this is the third time I've had to recreate their story.

My Sim gets about 3 or 4 NS calls a day and when she says No, they ring again the next day to update her. If they ring about a new friendship and she says No, they ring up and say thanks for suggesting it as they had a blast ..but she'd said No! With the new relationships, I say no as sometimes they want to see someone in a relationship already. When my Sim meets a townie I usually edit the NPC sim and create a flat or small house for them, so again it's messing up my work.

I've got most of the DLC and have 92 bugs/glitches in my game already and I'm frustrated that this is yet another massive addition to a broken game.

I see a new roadmap is out, these used to be what I was waiting for but now all I'm waiting for is a bit admission that they need to switch focus to fixes. I know I'd respect them so much more for that.

I love the Sims so I hate to sound so negative but I've played it from it's very first Sims game all those years ago and I feel it's getting unplayable now and I even bought a next gen console to help when even Microsoft told me it wouldn't.

NS was a good idea in theory (and the team do have a lot of good ideas) but at the wrong time. All this cheerful positivity from them about new stuff, I find it tone deaf.

[valohim666]

@simsplayer818 For me EA has way too much of a priority on paid content, and instead of stopping to actually make sure the existing content functions properly they just move right on to the next pack or kit or whatever and ultimately end up introducing even more problems. I joked with my nephew yesterday that each update fixes 2 problems but adds in about 5 more so it's a never ending loop of updates, though unfortunately that's probably not far from the truth because so many things are never addressed properly. They cannot continue to keep piling up problem after problem when they don't even bother fixing a lot of the ones that have existed for a long time, some problems have even been there for years. At this point I feel like the game is held together by duct tape, and every new piece of content (paid or free) adds in even more cracks that just get covered with more duct tape.

I used to really love these games, my interest in them started with the original game and has continued up to the current one, but the more I stop and look at each game and all the problems they have I sometimes wonder why I was ever okay with games that all have a lot of issues. I used to regularly visit a modding site and so many of the people there put Sims 2 up on a pedestal as if it was perfect, yet there are so many issues that were never addressed in that game and if you don't know about them they can ruin your save. Sims 3 was a mess from the start, and for me is unplayable without a ton of mods and even with them it's still really rough.

[daikoyu]

I agree the calls are extreme annoying. Before NS I had the baby call maybe once in a week and it was always a household which I don’t played. Now I get constant these calls from played(inactive) households. Thank you but I don’t want changes on my played households and is annoying to ignore these calls if there so much.

+ I hate the new romance calls. They don’t filter right. I have siblings ask if they should date her OWN sibling or the crush of my sim calls if he should date other sims too. In which world calls your romantic partner if they should date another person? You want my permission that you can cheat on me? This is so nice from you! (I am old school; I don't want this open relationship in my game)

I wish I could toggle all this calls off or at least toggle it that I don't get calls from my played inactive households (I know bienchen has a mod for, but this doesn’t help for my vanilla game).

[xochiquetzl_xkvn]

Yeah, I admit that I’m using Bienchen’s mod so that only never played households call me. I love that the panel sees us rotational players, but the calls… don’t. I don’t want my played households to make changes without me!

[simsplayer818]

@xochiquetzl_xkvn That's a good idea, that's exactly what needs to be incorporated into the game for console players.
So these ideas and solutions are already out there to make it function in a way to keep everyone happy. Fingers crossed the devs are listening.

[Kitilark62]

My Neighborhood Stories does not seem to be working correctly.  I set all the life events before I started playing my current Sim Family, but one of the neighbors has gone rogue.

[xochiquetzl_xkvn]

So, this is a suggestion for rotational players.(Bear with me!)

I play one week rotations with each family I play (and with aging set for played households to active household only). So, if I have a rotation of two households and leave townie aging on, they age twice as fast as my Sims. If I have a rotation of four, they age four times as fast. If I leave it off, well, they're eternal and my Sims aren't.

(You might not care and that's also valid, but unless I'm actively going for that Highlander vibe...)

So, one thing I've started doing is what I call "aging week."  During the first household's week in a rotational save, I turn aging on for unplayed households and then turn it back off at the end of that week.

This doesn't play nicely with Neighborhood Stories on all the time, so I've instituted the policy that Neighborhood Stories are ON during Aging Week and OFF the rest of the time. It's just a single button to turn it on and off, which is nice.  (And yes, it's turning off for me.) This seems to be a pace that works well with my game.

(It does require you to remember when Aging Week is, LOL, but I consider it worth the maintenance.)

[ms_bean_3000]

@EA_Cade Hello! Does neighborhood stories work with the legacy edition?